


How To Write An Original Screenplay

by ion_bond



Category: The Fall (2006)
Genre: Canon - Movie, Gen, Post-Canon, Prison, Screenplay/Script Format, Storytelling
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2008-12-15
Updated: 2008-12-15
Packaged: 2018-01-25 05:07:39
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,133
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1633136
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ion_bond/pseuds/ion_bond
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"We are able to predict the motions of planets millions of miles off in space, but no one can predict the outcome of tossing a penny or throwing a pair of dice." -- Mathematics and the Imagination by Edward Kasner and James Roy Newman, 1940</p>
            </blockquote>





	How To Write An Original Screenplay

**Author's Note:**

> Many thanks to aphrodite_mine, the Masked Beta, and to people I don't know on the source film's IMDB meessage board for their inspirational comments.
> 
> Written for otahyoni

 

 

PART I: A MESSAGE

_I luv yu I luv yu I luv yu._

August 15, 1939

Dear Mr. Walker,

I don't know if you remember me anymore but I am the little girl you told stories to in the hospital in Los Feliz many years ago. I had a broken arm. At the time I remember thinking that whatever was wrong with you was very serious and that you would be crippled but I guess I was wrong. My English was not very good as a child and I often misunderstood things that were told to me. 

I have watched for you in every picture I've seen since 1922. I used to believe all the stunts were you. That can't be true but still I sometimes think I recognize you -- I knew I was not imagining things when I saw you hit from behind by a stool in "The Bent Bow," and I'm sure there are many others. I think you are very brave and a fine actor but I do not mean for this to be an ordinary letter of the kind you must receive every day telling you how I enjoy watching your movies (even though I do, very much.) I want to tell you instead how thankful I am for your extraordinary stories. No one in the world has ever told me stories that were so real to me. I have always thought of you fondly, and wondered about you.

Once, I almost sent you a box of oranges, but I thought better of it. I hate oranges and do not want them to make you think of me. Maybe this is a silly thing to say. All I can do to explain is to tell you about smudge pots. Have you ever been to an orange grove in the winter? A smudge pot has a base full of oil and a chimney three or four feet tall and looks something like the warning lamps workmen put out on the highway when repairs are being done only bigger. They are lit between the trees when the temperature drops below freezing so that the heat and dirty smoke will keep the frost from ruining the fruit. Oranges are more delicate than most people would guess. I remember seeing the lights from the hospital window like stars in the hills, and thinking that they belonged to your story, but you were in another building of course.

Once they are burning well there is little light -- just great quantities of smoke from the low-grade diesel. The residue makes its way into everything, covering the lawns and blackening the wallpaper inside the houses. Keeping the lamps lit in the groves is like being in Hell. We would stay up all night dressed in layers of clothes and we would fall asleep on the floor of the work-camp kitchen so that we wouldn't get our beds dirty. 

There were too many cold Christmases and I was glad to get away. Now that I am not allowed to send you anything at all it seems like the right time to finally write. 

Yours truly,

Alexandria Madgearu

* * *

The cell where they held the Masked Bandit was cold. The floor was plain swept dirt, but high above the bandit's head, the walls reached up like those of a cathedral and met in an arch that was almost out of sight in the gloom. The walls and ceiling were tiled in ceramic, tiny hexagons in indigo and bone. Someone -- a long-ago prisoner or perhaps the guards -- had stripped away the tiles from the lower part of the cell, exposing stone and the impossibility of escape by digging. Here, gouged marks recorded the names of the bandit's predecessors -- Alexandre Manette, Mulla Aliy-i-Bastami, Princess Duan, Edmond Dantes -- and rows of gashes and crosshatches numbered their captive days. 

The bandit tried not to look at them. It was disheartening. It was wiser to spend the time counting, following the patterns upwards until the colors of the individual pieces were indistinguishable, like smoke in the wind. There was not a number, yet, for how many tiles there were.

The single door to the cell was iron-banded oak, easy to scratch, impossible to break. There were two openings in it, a barred gap at the top that allowed the prisoner to be observed, and a shuttered slot at the bottom through which oranges were passed, to keep the bandit alive. The only light came from the hallway on the other side of the door. The bright flickering and rich oil-smell that reached the cell suggested unseen torches burning both day and night.

There were no windows. The bandit thought that a window, even a small one would have helped. 

* * *

October 24, 1939

Dear Mr. Walker,

I can't feel very sure that you even received my last letter. I hope this address is the right one. I wrote Martin Sinclair to get it. I know you worked with him once and I thought he might remember you.

If this reached you, you must be in Edendale where the studios used to be before they all moved to Hollywood. I wish that I was there too, riding a red car from downtown along Allesandro Avenue with automobiles passing on both sides of the tracks. I always loved Los Angeles even though it made my mother cry. When I was a young when there was picking and boxing and smudging to be done we lived on the groves and we went to the city when there was not. The men that I knew traveled to other places -- the Dakotas for the grain harvest, Oregon to log or Alaska to fish on commercial boats -- but there was no work for women and girls in those places. We saved up our money all year for the winter and spring, and my mother did other people's laundry while me and my sister played with Mexican children and made her worry.

Because I have so much time, I have thought a good deal about what else it might mean that you did not answer my letter. There are a thousand explanations I guess. Your line of work is dangerous of course, but I think if the address was wrong or you were dead, the Post Office would have sent the first letter back. Did you notice where this was coming from? I bet you did right away and I bet you wonder what I am doing in here. It has to do with stealing although I told you I was not a thief -- but you probably don't remember that. 

It's foolish to go on this way when you might be throwing away anything I send you. You're not the kind of person who would do that, are you?

Yours truly,

Alexandria Madgearu

* * *

There was no furniture here. There were no chains or manacles. Nothing. The Masked Bandit did press-ups and sit-ups and paced the cell. Ate oranges. Tapped on the walls in code. Stood on tiptoes and scraped at the lowest row of tiles. Curled in the corner and pretended to be invisible. Wrote urgent words in the piths of the peels and threw them into the hallway. There was never any response. There were no comrades, no fellow prisoners. There was no way to know if the cell was a tower or if it was far underground. 

The mask had not been taken away with the the revolvers, the dagger, the belt and the boots. The bandit removed it now.

The Indian had once told them all how the his squaw had been left by Governor Odious to wander alone through the Labyrinth of Despair. She had known immediately that she was condemned to death, but she explored the maze of climbing stairs until her feet began to bleed. The bandit imagined her, unresigned to her fate as she calmly investigated the twists and turns, always keeping one hand to the wall so that she would not become lost. How long was it before she became sure that the only way out was a fall? 

Here, there was no room for prolonged hope. The bandit walked the close circumference of the cell, testing the strength of the old silk mask, twisting it, pulling at it. The fabric, torn to shreds and braided into a rope, would not be long enough to be of much use. There was no window to climb out of, no protruding nail from which to hang oneself. Besides, that sort of escape was against the Bandit Code.

The mask was made of cloth folded over and over on itself to make it stiff. There were eyeholes in each layer. The prisoner ripped out all the seams and spread it on the dusty floor, unfolding the silk so that there were two holes, then four, then six, then eight, like a piece of paper cut into a snowflake by a child. It looked like a message, thought the bandit, but there was nothing there.

* * *

December 2, 1939

Dear Mr. Walker,

I am a little angry at you and would not still be writing if I had anything better to do. It is not very bad here, by the way, just dull -- not that you are worried. 

Being here is much like the hospital for me. It is interesting to talk to the other women and the guards, some of whom are frightening but most of whom are not. I always want to see things and talk to people. I think I would have cracked up if I were you, being alone behind those curtains like solitary confinement. We don't have that here because this is a medium security facility and none of us are murderers or anything. They let us in the exercise yard when the men are not there but most of the day I work in the dress factory. 

When I moved to Los Angeles for good, I was a waitress at a cafeteria and then I got a job at Hamburger's Department Store on Broadway and 8th Street. I'm sure that you've seen it. It is named after a person, not a sandwich, and it's a beautiful building like a palace with moving stairways. That's where I met Constantine, who worked in the Shoe Department. 

Do you know what happened to the real Otta Benga? I found newspaper articles about him at Central Library one time. He was a pygmy who was brought to America to be shown in a zoo. When the priests said that it was wrong for a man to be treated like a beast in this way, they let him out and gave him American clothes and made him go to school, but he was very sad. One day, he took off the clothes and filed his teeth into points. He built a sacred fire and shot himself. This is almost as sad as the story you told me. It would be terrible to die for nothing. 

Was the Otta Benga in your story meant to be a pygmy? I always imagined him as a great tall man.

The real Charles Darwin died at home when he was very old.

Yours truly,

Alexandria Madgearu

* * *

The Masked Bandit guessed that it was probably night now, although inside the cell, the quality of light was the same as ever. Shadows from the corridor flickered across the floor. 

During the day, guards patrolled outside at regular intervals, sometimes in their rubber helmets, sometimes in surgical masks. A clever thing to do would be to make friends with them and enlist their help with the escape. The bandit had been good at making friends with anyone, once upon a time, but did not have the talent for convincing people do things just by talking to them. Speaking to the guards in a kind voice through the shuttered gap in the door did not work, and neither did yelling They would not stop to listen.

At night, there were no guards. The latest letter was finished, one long curving strip of peel with letters pressed deep with a thumbnail. The bandit fed it through the bars and moved back to the very center of the small chamber, looking up at the faraway ceiling, pretending it was the sky. She closed her eyes and rubbed them. 

Somewhere outside, there were stars she could not count. 

PART II: AN EPIC

_I throw oring in preest._

Roy's agent forwarded his fan-mail, such as it was, in batches. Roy was no Orson Welles. He got maybe two or three modest rubber-banded stacks a year. This did not possibly allow for timely responses.

He didn't go through the letters as regularly as he ought to, though. That part was his fault. He tended to put it off like a chore. It all took a lot of time -- opening the envelopes, deciphering the handwriting, two-fingering his replies on his Corona Speedline -- and Roy didn't enjoy praise the way he should. 

Still, if intentions counted for anything, he couldn't be blamed. Alexandria's letters had been inside the lift-up top of his desk in his apartment in Echo Park along with other letters and contracts and misplaced drafts, hidden in the stack like jokers shuffled into a pack of cards, the typewriter weighing down on top. He would never have allowed them to go unanswered if he had known that they were there. 

It hurt Roy that she could suspect he might be judging her. He told himself that he absolutely didn't deserve to be regarded that way. 

He drove through the groves to the penitentiary by himself in his red car with the rust spots, a pillow stuffed between the seat and the small of his back. A Pacific breeze was blowing in over the Oxnard Plain. He kept his windows open, even through it was almost Christmas and not particularly warm. He felt a guilty twinge of gladness not to be the one who was locked up, and then let the wind blew it away. There were enough other things to feel guilty about. 

She got _her_ mail delivery every day, apparently. Roy had included his home address along with his apology and his request for the visiting hours, and her answer reached him less than a week after he first wrote. He was coming as soon as he could. 

The room where they led him was full of chairs and tables and men and children visiting their women. It was not as bad here as he had imagined. The walls were white-painted cinderblock, but the late-afternoon sun came in through wide windows with a view of the prison yard, the wire-topped fence and the parking lot, the Simi Hills behind as lovely as a painted set. A clock ticked loudly and two guards and a matron stood in the corner, looking on. 

Roy recognized Alexandria by process of elimination -- she was one of the few prisoners who looked like they were still waiting for someone to show up. She was stocky in a mint-green dress, with clear pale eyes and beautiful hair. He walked across the room slowly, trying to disguise his limp. 

"Oh, Roy!" she said, when she saw him coming. "You got hurt again?" 

He pulled out the chair across from her and sat. "Just the once. I learned my lesson." He was the wrong side of forty, and even if he was still a stuntman, he would be retired by now, but he was gratified by her belief in him. He grinned. "I'm a screenwriter. It's what I've been doing for fifteen years. Didn't Sinclair mention that?"

"No," she said. "Maybe his secretary wrote the letter? It _was_ very businesslike." Her mouth had the same humorous quality Roy remembered, although her teeth had grown in even and straight. He could barely hear the accent any more. It was odd how someone who neither looked nor sounded much like the kid he had once known could seem so familiar to him. "I go to the movies a lot," she said. She gestured toward the concrete walls. "Not recently, but usually I do. What did you work on this year?"

"Um, 'When Next We Meet' and 'Hold That Kiss.' And 'The Navy Spirit.' They really killed that one in rewrites, but the first draft was mine." 

"I didn't see any of those. No fights. You don't tell that kind of story anymore?"

She was right. He'd been doing mostly romances and society comedies recently. He'd hardly written a cowboy since he stopped working on the silents. "I like lots of dialogue," he said. "Otherwise, what's the point of pictures that talk?" 

"I like action best."

"I remember that about you," Roy said. He remembered the dimple that showed in her cheek, too, and was glad she hadn't grown out of it. He had been worried that she was miserable here, despite what her letters said, but she seemed all right. He wondered what she would say if he asked straight out.

"It's funny, growing up," Alexandria said. "You're tall, but not as tall as I remember."

He thought of how she had towered over him, kneeling on the edge of the mattress to flap a chubby hand in the air above his head, making what she thought were bird sounds. Roy laughed. "That's nice of you to say." Those same hands, long and adult now, were spread before her on the table. He saw the plain gold band. "Who comes to visit you here?"

"My sister. My husband."

"Constantine?" Roy hazarded. "From the shoe department. Right. Another great name." He hadn't thought from her signature that she was married. He wondered how old this man was, whether he was Romanian too. 

"I call him Costica," Alexandria said. "That's the short name for Constantine in my country. No one comes very often. They have work and no car to drive." She leaned forward eagerly. "Will you tell me a story please?" she asked. "A new one?"

"I wanted you to tell _me_ a story for a change." 

She shook her head emphatically. "You."

"All right," Roy conceded. He thought for a minute about what he wanted, and what she might like to hear. A good story was always about both. "Does it have to have a fight?"

"No," said Alexandria. "Not unless you think it fits."

"Let's see, then. There once was a beautiful girl -- a young woman, I mean. She worked in a white palace with cornices and balustrades and wide hallways. Although she was from a proud family herself, a time of hunger had swept the land, and she was forced to find a job to feed them. The lord and lady of this palace always had visitors. The guests were all really rich too, but some of them hadn't earned their wealth honestly -- gamblers and slave traders were often in attendance."

Across the table, Alexandria had closed her eyes, but she seemed to be listening attentively. He wondered, as he always had, what she was picturing. She used to correct him when she didn't like how the story was going. If he told her a lie this time, she might tell him the truth.

"The lady of the palace," Roy went on, "the young woman's mistress, had many jewels that she wore on fancy occasions -- ropes of pearls, bracelets and necklaces encrusted with sapphires, a Blood Ruby from the Orient of enormous size that had been made into a brooch, and lots of other treasures. One of the young woman's daily jobs was to remove the jewels from the casks where they were kept and polish them until they shone even more brightly. The lady had so many that she only wore each piece once a year in a strict rotation, but she wanted all of her jewels to be ready at all times."

The clock on the wall ticked softly. The matron looked up at it, shifting her weight from one foot to another. Alexandria sat very still.

Roy continued to speak. "Amazed, the young woman told her friend, a handsome footman, about the riches of which she had been given charge. The footman was pretty much in love with the young woman, and she was fond of him as well. They wanted to run away and live together, but they were too poor. One day the footman said to the young woman, 'Your mistress has so many jewels. Do you think that she would notice if one went missing?'"

"OK," said Alexandria, her eyes opening. "Stop now."

"What?" he asked.

"That's not how it happened at all."

"Of course it's not. I know it's not. It's a story -- fiction."

"Why are you saying it that way? What are you trying to make guess?" 

Her English was faltering. Roy raised his hands, palms out. "Nothing! It's a story. You wouldn't tell me, so now I'm telling you." 

"You don't know anything. There were no jewels -- not even any money, Roy." Her voice was flat and scornful. "I worked in the advance-credit department. I charged things to customers that they didn't buy. Fraud -- very boring. That's it, all right?" 

Her chin was held high, her shoulders still, but she was shivering like a line pulled taut. Roy wished he could control himself so well when he was angry. He wanted to touch her, but he was afraid, and besides, it was probably not allowed. "It's not your fault," he said.

"It is my fault! Costica didn't even know. Just because you can make me steal doesn't mean just anyone could!"

He'd gotten what he wanted from her again and the shame he felt was an injury eighteen years old. It ached like his back ached in wet weather. "That's not what I meant," Roy said helplessly. "I'm sorry." 

"It's not about you, either," Alexandria said. "I was stupid. That's it! It's not an epic! Why do you have to blow everything up so big?"

"I thought you did it too. I thought that was why we got along."

"Only sometimes," she said disdainfully. "I can control myself if I want."

Other visitors were getting up from their chairs now, saying goodbye. Roy scuffed the flats of his nails against the varnish of the table. Their time was almost up, and he was desperate not to leave on bad terms. "Look, you know about me already. You know that I'm weak. You ... well, you forgave me, didn't you? I know you were just a kid, but I can't tell you what that meant to me. After that, I don't know how you could think I might get a letter from you that I wouldn't want to answer. " 

Alexandria regarded him without speaking. "Well," she began, after a long pass of the second hand. "You _didn't_ answer. It made me think you got yourself killed diving off a mast in 'The Opium Smugglers."

"That hack job? Sinclair was in that, wasn't he?" 

"Yes. But I liked it." Alexandria tucked a piece of her hair behind her ear. The gesture made her look younger than he knew her to be. "I'm still a little sad you weren't all the men I thought you were." 

"It was real nice to hear you liked my work," Roy told her. "Even if you were wrong. People don't write to writers, much. It's mostly about the guy who says the words and saves the heroine -- or looks like he saves the heroine. I imagine practically no one writes to stuntmen."

"Really?" She seemed genuinely amazed by this. 

She was beautiful, Roy realized for the first time. "Do you know why I did it?" he asked. "That thing with the train bridge? I was on the set to see someone, a friend. A man came up to all of us standing around and asked, 'Who knows how to jump off a horse and wants five dollars extra?'" 

The prison matron was now giving them purposeful glances. Stiffly, he got to his feet. 

"And then?" Alexandria asked.

"I grew up in Kentucky," he said. "I knew how."

"Why did you do it again?"

"What do you mean."

"I know that was you, in 'The Bent Bow.' I know your teeth."

The milk stool -- his comeback performance, his last goodbye. Lou had called and told him they needed someone for an easy job. Roy was working behind the front desk at a hotel that year, not sure what to do next. He had written a spec script that he hadn't sent out, and he had ideas for two others. He worked on them, on slow nights. He remembered pressing a telephone receiver against his chest and thinking hard. 

It seemed impossible that she could recognize him from that fraction of a second. He never thought anyone would.

"It took me a year to learn to walk again," he told Alexandria. "I guess I wanted to prove I still could."

"You still could fall?" she asked.

He thought of her as a six-year-old in the doorway of the ward, tossing an orange up in the air one-handed and clumsily catching it, how she'd come to him through the haze of morphine, making the particles of dust that hung in the light swirl like tiny galaxies, and sat sideways on his bed, dropping the fruit on his lap with a sigh. Oranges made him think of her. They always had. 

"Yeah," he said, holding tightly to the back of the chair. "No kidding."

PART III: A GOOGOL

_Alexandria X_

FADE IN:

EXT. DESERT -- DAY

Wide shot of a plain. Sand and rock formations stretch in every direction. Pan left. A small group of figures is visible on a ridge above the waste. The RED BANDIT slumps against the neck of a horse, apparently unconscious. The BLUE BANDIT holds the bridle. The horse walks with its head down, sweat streaking its dusty flank; it is obviously exhausted. The Blue Bandit, in contrast, appears to be fresh and well-rested. He moves with an easy, energetic grace, although he looks about him warily. Both men are dressed in black. Their masks correspond in color to their names. 

BLUE BANDIT: Can you hear me?

The Red Bandit groans, but does not speak.

BLUE BANDIT: If they're not following us yet, they will be soon. You need to help me.

A plume of dust appears right of frame on the plain below. Whatever is causing it is not yet visible.

BLUE BANDIT: That's them. The Governor and his men. 

He pulls his brother from the saddle. The Red Bandit weakly kicks his legs, trying to find purchase. The Blue Bandit half-drags, half-carries him to the shelter of a large rock. 

BLUE BANDIT: Wait here.

The Blue Bandit moves in a crouch to another rock near the place where the land begins to slope downward, and squints into the sun. Several men on horseback are approaching from a great distance. As he watches, they slow to a stop.

BELOW -- MOMENTS LATER

GOVERNOR ODIOUS walks over to his two GUIDES. They are riding bareback on ponies. One guide has his lips and the lower half of his face painted black, and they each have feathers braided into their hair. The first guide, the one without the paint, turns to Odious while his companion scans the horizon.

_No. That's not right._

GOVERNOR ODIOUS approaches his two GUIDES. They are mounted on camels. Both wear turbans, but one guide has the black cloth arranged around his face so that it covers his nose and mouth as well. The first guide, the one with the plain white turban, turns to Odious while his companion scans the horizon.

ODIOUS: Well?

FIRST GUIDE: They have gained the highlands. 

ODIOUS: I can't see them.

FIRST GUIDE: Nor can I. It doesn't matter. The path they have taken is very clear.

The second guide begins to write in the sand with a stick. The letters run together in a foreign script. The first guide looks over his shoulder.

ODIOUS: What does he say?

FIRST GUIDE: His eyes are keener than my own. He sees the horse, abandoned. (Pointing.) There! Our quarry must be hiding nearby.

ODIOUS: Remarkable! (To the second guide.) It's really a pity your tongue was cut out.

Close-up on the second guide's partially-shrouded face. His eyes are large and surprisingly beautiful, light gray in color, lined with kohl. He drops his head and resumes drawing in the sand.

FIRST GUIDE: He says no matter. Soon he will have his revenge on the bandit who did it.

* * *

December 5, 1941

Dear Alexandria,

Thanks for the copy of "Mathematics and the Imagination." I am really and truly trying to read it, but it's pretty tough going for me. I am glad that your magic word has become a number now, but don't see that it can be much use if it is bigger than the number of atoms in the observable universe. Stars and snowflakes and grains of sand in a desert are things that I can imagine counting; beyond that, I can't comprehend. 

Speaking of snow, we got some here last week and they have probably been smudging in the groves ever since, so be glad you are in Detroit. Please tell Constantine to stay in the auto plant and out of the army because you never know what might happen, what with the way things look in Europe. 

It was nice of you to let me know that you have been going out of your way to see my "boring" movies and I am gratified you thought some of them were bearable. I am working on a screenplay that you will like more I hope although I am afraid no one else will want to read it. My agent sure doesn't know what to make of it. It's a bandit story that shares a family resemblance to the one I told you once, so it does not quite feel as if it would all fit comfortably in the American West. I imagine this being shot in North Africa -- or somewhere around L.A. that looks like North Africa, anyway. 

I have resurrected the Red Bandit from death, and he is on the run with his brother, followed by Governor Odious, but an old friend of the bandits' is posing as one of Odious's guides and is trying to lead him off the scent. I'd like that character to turn out to be a woman, but I don't know -- this will be hard enough to sell as is. 

I won't tell you any more because it would ruin the suspense, but I am enclosing a copy of my draft. I would love to know what you think. 

I hope you are both well and happy. Merry Christmas. 

Your friend,

Roy

FIN

 


End file.
